"It is fashionable to promote climate change as being a contributor to changing fire frequency and intensity. The pattern of rainfall over the past century does not point to a trend of reduction in rainfall. Nor has any link been offered between global temperature trends and the meteorology of Victorian heatwaves. Extreme bushfire events are rare events and must be analysed according to the statistics relating to rare events; the breaking of a previous temperature record established 70 years earlier does not establish an underlying trend." Dr William Kininmonth, former head of Australia's national Climate Centre, writing in the Melbourne Age.